This invention relates to hydrants attached to municipal water systems, and in particular to a device for simplifying the flushing of portions of water systems by hydrants attached in the system.
The need for periodically flushing portions of water systems, particularly dead-ends in the systems, has been recognized for many years, as shown for example in Lazenby III, U.S. Pat. No. 4,756,479. A summary of many of the problems requiring such flushing, as well as of the traditional solutions to those problems, is contained in my co-owned U.S. Pat. No. 5,201,338. More recently, such flushing operations have been automated, as described in McCarty, U.S. Pat. No. 5,921,270. The McCarty patent is owned by a company related to the assignee of the present invention. A similar approach is described in Newman, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,035,704 and 6,358,408. Other approaches are shown in Poirer, U.S. Pat. No. 6,062,259, and Esmailzadeh, U.S. Pat. No. 6,467,498.
Although the prior art systems have met with some success, the complexity of the systems, the time and effort required to install and use them, and their consequent expense have limited their use.